On Being Crazy

Here's to Us

The Rebel Staff's versions of The Crazy Ones.

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By Diana Fernandez

This is for the rejects.

This is for the painters and the scientists.

This is for the dreamers and the pessimists.

This is for the dancers and the fighters and the musicians and the writers and the dare-devils and the do-gooders.

This is for the lost and the passionate,

For the people who don’t know what to do with what they’ve got yet.

This is for the outsiders and the outliers and everyone in between.

This is for anyone who’s ever sweat, cried, or strived for a dream.

This is for the girl who sings her heart out to the radio in her car with the windows down,

and this is for the boy who’s poetry stays stacked in the back of his sock drawer.

This is for the people who never win.

This is for the lovers and the heart-broken.

This is for the Doctor Seusses and the Dickinsons.

This is for the artist in everyone.

We are the people you shrug off in the hallways and pass over on the street.

We are the nameless, the faces at the back of the crowd walking against it.
Remember us. One day we’ll be more than merely noticed.

This is for the unforgettables.

This is for the crazy ones, who dare to do the things that nobody dares to do.

This is for the people who don’t just want to make a change, but need to.

For the incredibly quiet and the extremely loud, this is how we say we can hear you,

For every magnificent nonconformist addicted to free expression.

This is for the rebels.

 

By Goldy Levy

Amo la vida tanto que quiero agarrarla de las esquinas,
doblarla como un avión de papel
y mandarla a volar.
Quiero que después regrese a mí
llena de ideas y experiencias;
que se convierta en persona
y me enseñe el amor,
que se convierta en guerra
y me enseñe dolor, que se convierta en arte
y me enseñe verdad.
Mi vida de papel se arruga,
se escribe y reescribe,
se llena de color y noche.
Como una canción,
un baile,
escenas de películas viejas
o una fotografía digital,
tiene más máscaras
de las que puedo contar.

Hay muchos más en este mundo
que también tienen vidas de papel. Y esto es para todos aquellos
que aman tanto la vida,
que como yo,
quieren doblarla,
como un avión de papel.

 

By Kiera Johnson

Here's to crazy. To wild-eyed passion. To wide-eyes that never stop looking, never quit searching. For beauty, for answers, for the edge of the world. For the sharp edge on a numb tongue, for budding breath clinging to fingertips.

There are no rules in dreams. No boundaries, no gravity. Nothing to bind us in reality. And to harness the power of a dream is to simultaneously unleash the mind. To take hold of desire, to inspire. Aspire to be a dreamer because in dreams you are everything. And to create the dream in reality is to be anything, do everything. And anything has no rules.

Perhaps we need the crazy to change us, rearrange us into something new. Crazy is not ordinary. Beauty is not ordinary. We need the extraordinary to shake us, make us believe and dream and create ourselves and our world for what we want. For ourselves and others. For the ones who long for beauty. And for those who have lost it.

So here's to creation. To changing the world. This is for the rebels.